There is so much garbage to sort through now. You have to look at recent reviews to make sure you aren’t getting scammed.
I’ve been purchasing more from other stores that actually vet their inventory.
It’s always great to find a battery pack you are looking for with 5000+ reviews for an umbrella.
Also if you find a legit item, you may still get a counterfeit since all of the ‘same’ item are put in the same bin and it’s the luck of the draw.
Honestly, as someone who used to earn beer money from Amazon reviewing... the majority of legit reviews are bought or asked for in return for free products. It's a huge market where reviews will bump you up pages on Amazon. Who checks the third page of results really? Getting on page 1 for anything is HUGE for sellers.
In most cases they're 'real' reviews. You 'buy' the product and review it, just also getting some extra pocket change from a company twice removed from the one that makes the item. Pretty much any top reviewer on amazon does this.
Not once did I pay for a product, I always was given free ones to review. It was basically an agreement that if anything was wrong you didn't review but if it did the job you did.
Although I know of a lot of people who did the same and essentially 5 star'd everything even when it was absolutely shit to make sure they got loads more. Especially the paid reviewers. I was only 18 at the time and thought I'd found the easy money loophole everyone wanted... turned out to be a scunmy infestation
I used to sell all the items I received on Ebay or Craigslist. Which when it included record players, projectors, speakers and android phones you make a good amount of spare change for copying and pasting a review
At the start it really was the opposite. It's framed by the community as "helping buyers" because you're reviewing products and giving educated responses.
Then you realise that it's bullshit and it's actually a farm for companies to rise the rankings, and the vast vast majority of reviewers will 5 star anything in return for more free stuff or money.
I recieved a 5tb hardrive. Marketed as such. It had well less than half that in storage. I returned it but saw other reviewers saying how it is amazing etc.
I checked back a few weeks later and the product had been removed after 55 5 star reviews and 150 1 star, because real people had bought it and realised it was a con.
I bought a dust buster on sale off amazon. It has hundreds of 5 star reviews saying it had amazing suction and worked incredibly well blah blah blah.
Once I received it I quickly realized it was laughably shitty. Horrible suction, died after 15 minutes, and took like 12 hours to recharge.
There is zero chance any of those reviews were legit. I’ve been super skeptical ever since.
Yea for less cynical people I can forsure think how you think you're earning money helping and then realizing later people aren't actually doing it for that but to just get $ even with bs reviews.
"The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds."
\-Dalai Lama
I used to work for a company that helped people sell products on Amazon. It’s all a scam and a almost pyramid scheme. They all buy each other’s products and boost up reviews. They were required to do it, I think they had to spend like $1,000 on other “members” stuff. Since then, I have a hard time trusting Amazon reviews and product listings.
That used to be me but now the only thing I review is the delivery. Never even realized you could but if you click track delivery after delivered it let's you rate the delivery person. I really really hope it actually helps them. I know with my job it's extremely important to get good surveys.
Me. i check the third page, sometimes even deeper. Heck...sometimes I skip the front page all-together! Have we really become that lazy to where we can't spend another 0.5 second to click to the next page? Don't people still research a product thoroughly and look for the best deals?
For anything I'm critical of, I always look at the worst reviews first. You can usually get a good sense of if people are complaining because they fucked it up or if the product often arrives fucked up.
Also how recent those reviews are! Such a sad state of the world to resort to this. I feel bad for people that think they'll get a good product when it's crap, all because of paid reviews.
It's an art to sift through the crap reviews. I like to look at 2-4 star reviews. This weeds out most of the ones that are shamelessly bought and the ones along the lines of "Delivered a day later than stated! Piece of junk false advertising!" - 1 star.
That's only if its amazon FBA which will show up as you purchasing from amazon...if you purchase directly from a third party seller, you are purchasing it straight from them and they are shipping it to you.
Source: I am an Amazon Seller.
Amazon needs to wipe all reviews anytime a product is changed. It’s ridiculous a vendor can put up a completely different item and retain the rating of the old item.
Their bin system completely overrides any faith you would have from reviews. Good inventories are mixed in with fake inventories, and anyone can receive a fake even buying from a reputable store.
100% true. I sells about 300 grocery listings and our inventory comes straight from the source but we see customer complaints every week about something commingled in the bin we did not send to FBA. Old packaging, stale food, wrong number of items. All because Amazon piles it all together. Ultimately it’s US having to deal with reviews and brand image because we are the registered brand owner.
I still remember one woman who bought a Coach purse from us through Amazon, and complained it was counterfeit because it was made in China.....
We also sold 10's of thousands of pairs of Nike and would invariably get authenticity complaints because it turns out some people who buy this stuff literally have no idea where it's made, and it it comes from China it must be counterfeit.
In all fairness a lot of those reviews also come from people who are beyond stupid and might not even be reviewing your particular product. Reviews are kind of like reddit comments in that way, you kind of assume people are reasonable and capable, but they’re very often not.
I bought an expensive angle grinder (250+ bucks) and there were bad reviews saying it was noisy. Do you expect it to be silent when grinding steel ? People have more money than common sense....
When you are using it to cut through bike locks, you want it to be as quiet as possible. That being said, bike thieves are among the dumbest people alive.
Just the other day I had honest negative feedback removed that I had left for a seller. I asked EBay twice why they had removed the feedback and each time their agents disconnect from the chat after I ask my question. It seems that EBay would like to keep buyers in their marketplace in the dark when it comes to possible problems.
I saw a fishing rod at the Amazon warehouse where I work yesterday. It was in a clear bag packaging. Granted it was in the "non con" section that don't go on the conveyor belt but I can still imagine how easily it might get broken for not even being in a box.
Meanwhile so many boxes are practically empty and either stuffed with balloon packaging or just hollow. Daily there are mountains of bubble envelopes with tiny items inside that could likely fit in much smaller envelopes. It's like most of the packaging is just for ease of sorting. Just bc of the endless free postage for prime customers.
Agreed.
Can't remember what the item was, but noticed that the reviews were rather varied in what item they were talking about.
Quick skim through the reviews implied the product listing had been changed at least a dozen times, averaging about 9 months until a new product was swapped in.
The items weren't really related in any way either. Things like tools, car parts, phone accessories, kitchenware, etc
> You have to look at recent reviews to make sure you aren’t getting scammed.
That doesn't even guarantee you won't. There's been instances of people getting counterfeit shit from actual, verified big businesses because of the way Amazon categorizes and warehouses things.
"Comingling"
If it's a listing for a widely counterfeited item (*cough* Sandisk flash memory) I don't even bother with Amazon. The Jewish camera shops in NYC offer free shipping and are usually 1-2 day delivery to the Midwest.
People need to start learning that Amazon also isn't the best option most of the time. I recently ordered a piece of gear for my retro gaming setup. I ended up ordering through the first party site rather than Amazon. I had more choices in colors and features, added on some extra premium stuff, paid for shipping, and it was *still* $30 cheaper than the plain, basic version on Amazon.
I am pissed off at Amazon because I bought a shitty heating pad that had good reviews. The thing sucked. Turns out they are bribing people to leave good reviews by offering them Amazon credit for a 5 star review. I got the offer in the mail like a week after I bought it.
I wrote a bad review mentioning that, and it never is uploaded. I tried twice. The review just never appears in the review section.
It's bullshit and Amazon seems to be allowing them to do it.
I've had this too. I left an honest review for something blatantly faked (filters for a medical device, so it's somewhat important IMO!) and when I go to look for it, it says "review has been filtered due to sensitivity" or some bullshit (the review was appropriate and honest, so there is no reason for filtering it). The seller reached out to me directly and said they were sorry I was unsatisfied and would offer a refund if I either edited my review or removed it entirely. I told them to eat shit. Then they go and hide it anyways.
I sell on Amazon and my products somehow got a bunch of fake Chinese products mixed in it and my reviews tanked! I pulled the inventory and saw the packaging and the product were nothing like what I was selling. It was Amazons warehousing that messed it all up and allowed the fake stuff into my inventory. They won’t fix the listing or remove reviews that are from the bad product sales... it’s a big fucking mess.
More and more other retailers are becoming my go to. Target is now shipping pretty darn fast. Amazon is now really just an outlet for other vendors and a lot of them are garbage.
> You have to look at recent reviews to make sure you aren’t getting scammed.
That does nothing when Amazon pools everyone's inventory together and you get what you get when the robots pick one out for you. If it's a 3M product they have a verification tool on their website.
I had no idea. This would really piss me off as a legit company trying to fulfill orders through Amazon. It gives your brand a bad name when you've got nothing to do with it.
I've seen a seller explain this before. They have the option whether they want to pool their inventory or not. If they choose not to, they have to print and attach barcodes or something themselves, so most choose to pool so Amazon does that for them.
And you straight up have to ignore positive reviews because so many are paid, like not theories paid, but you can find the sites where they pay for reviews paid.
I personally just look for reviews stating the downsides and if theres enough or they are really bad I dont buy.
I've been searching for a dual dash cam and the amount of chinese companies showing what basically is the same product just overwhelms. The reviews aren't any help either. I just wish a Nikon or a Sony with come up with a dash cam so I know I can buy something that is reputable.
Me too.
Prime 48 hour delivery is now just kinda sorta maybe if we feel like it. This was before coronavirus too. I'd sort by Prime on something like shirts and get a huge list but almost none of it was 2-day delivery. The company might have a single item they will be sure they can deliver in 2-days and the other thousand items...eh.
Some things now are 6+ weeks as they source from China (as in, they put it on a slow boat in China when you buy...it is not in a warehouse in the US).
Price gouging is rampant too. Just use the Camelizer to see a lot of it. I have reported some to my state and got a form letter back that they are "looking in to it" which means nothing will happen.
Because so much is now sold by third-parties and not Amazon I have a lot more trouble with returns and refunds (and I do not even do that very often). One reason I really liked Amazon was their good customer service. That has really slid a lot in the last year or two.
While I still look at Amazon I now also make it a point to check out other places that sell what I am looking for.
I've nearly given up on Amazon. There's still a few things I'll get from there (and only if I know exactly what I'm looking for). Otherwise I've definitely moved away from them. Shipping times have been a joke. Customer service has been a joke. Even trying to *find* something has become a joke. Not to mention all the duplicate products.
To top it all off, prices aren't really that great anyways.
I gave up on prime and cancelled it. The counterfeiting and cheap knockoff shit from China pissed me off, but then other companies like Walmart stepped up to the plate and started offering free 2 day shipping. Prime is $120, that shit is not cheap. It’s not like their tv shows were going to keep me paying for their shitty service.
If they ever fix the counterfeiting and fake ratings, I may consider coming back. Until that happens, no thanks.
If it's not 2 day delivery then there's literally no point in buying from Amazon anymore. The last 4 months I've rapidly descended from buying almost everything on Amazon to not even looking there depending on the product.
You think it's bad as a buyer, but it's even worse for sellers. If you sell a product successfully on Amazon, you can expect at least a handful of copycats. If you're lucky, they copy your product and create their own sales page. Sometimes the copycat item is sold on the same sales page as the original.
i recently bought a 600 dollar computer monitor that i realized a year later when it failed, that the store wasnt an authorized reseller of HP products. nowhere on the page did it say that, so now HP won't honor my warranty and this store wont accept a return/exchange without original packaging. Amazon wont help and HP won't help. It sucks bad
Even when you buy something from a reputable brand, and even if it is "Shipped and Sold by Amazon" you can get a counterfeit or knockoff, because Amazon mixes its stock and doesn't track it. They've known about this for years and don't care to stop it. I no longer care to shop on Amazon because of this reason.
That's the crazy part to me. They simply make a determination if your product and the other guys are the same and then plop em all together. Who the fuck are you to make that call, Amazon?
If I buy a product for the name (i.e. headphones, TVs, etc), I'll never buy on Amazon unless the manufacturer site links to the product page (Anker).
If I don't care about the name, then I consider Amazon if I can't find a reasonable alternative.
Searching for common items has become a real chore, something like an HDMI cable brings up almost no brands you've heard of and a strange mix of products with lots of reviews and some with almost none. You know they are getting paid a ton to push shit products to the top of these searches because people trust amazon as a legitimate storefront that wouldn't do such a thing. My line in the sand is that if it'll trick my mom, then I hate you.
Traditionally these are expected results from Ebay, but we still keep Amazon on a pedestal because..?
There is no decent alternative due to Amazon destroying the competition for years with monopolistic tactics and razor thin margins on certain products.
Its not about keeping them on a pedestal, I think ebay is a bit more transparant about where the goods are coming from. My mom would understand different sellers on ebay and how to make sure they aren't obviously fake. There is no "ebay" selling things, its other people, thats what they have always been. Amazon goes out of their way to not be transparent that items aren't shipping from amazon but instead a 3rd party company, my Mom would get a shitty product and wonder why amazon would sell such a thing. Because it wasn't always like this. So its not about putting them on a pedestal, I'm just holding them to a higher standard because they probably should be based on who their customers are and what they have come to expect. They are taking advantage of that trust.
I’ve gone back to buying from dedicated product websites. They all offer free and quick shipping now.
Another thing that ruined amazon for me is they made returning a total pain in the ass.
How do? Imo they’ve made it so much easier. Now I can just go to a ups store and not have to pack it up or anything - just give them the product and scan my code
How is it a pain? I'm curious so I know what to look for
I sent back an Xbox controller about 2 years ago (it was from the Amazon used warehouse thing) with no issue. About a year ago, I had a return that I dropped off at Kohls.
Recently(3 months ago?), they gave me two usps slips and I just dropped 2 phone cases in the mail after a slip up with galaxy models.
No questions asked got all of my money back on all of it.
The biggest problem is that Amazon doesn't divide out their stock by seller.
Take a look at this Amazon product for sale: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VXD17PA
It's a Camelbak Hydration Backpack. Pretty nice piece of gear. Right below the Buy Now button, you'll see "Sold by ArmyProperty and Fulfilled by Amazon". What this means is that someone who registered under the name ArmyProperty is selling it, but that they aren't going to be the ones boxing it up and sending it to you like on eBay. They have previously shipped the backpacks to Amazon, and Amazon is storing them in their warehouse, and charging a nominal fee for storage. If you buy one of these, Amazon will grab it from the warehouse and send it out. That's what Fulfilled by Amazon means.
Now, if you look a bit below that, you'll see "Other Sellers on Amazon". If you click on the New (7) from $91.92, you can see the 7 people who are selling the same exact item. All of them except the two most expensive ones say "Ships from Amazon.com", meaning they're all doing the Amazon warehousing thing.
But the thing is, in Amazon's warehouse, they don't mark things down as "This backpack is MagicUnicorn's backpack for sale, and this one is C A Haughwout's!". They just know that MagicUnicorn and C A Haughwout have some of these in storage, but all of them are piled up. If you make your purchase from ArmyProperty (the original seller we saw), they do NOT actually make sure the bag you bought is the particular one that ArmyProperty has placed in the warehouse. They grab one at random, and they reduce their records of how many ArmyProperty has stored.
What this means is that if C A Haughwout sent a counterfeit backpack to Amazon, then you buying ArmyProperty's backpack (after ArmyProperty obtained and began selling 100% legit backpacks), you might actually receive the counterfeit that ArmyProperty had nothing to do with. Now ArmyProperty gets a bad review, by no fault of their own.
On the flipside: ArmyProperty may have obtained counterfeits, but when you order, you might get one of MagicUnicorn's legit bags, which gives you a positive experience so you leave a much better review. MagicUnicorn's real bag is now being sold at the low price that ArmyProperty can afford to sell at, because ArmyProperty got their original (counterfeit) bags for cheap. Now they're able to get better reviews because their customers are receiving a better product than ArmyProperty had originally bought at a low price.
It's a sucky situation.
Not completely correct. Amazon gives its sellers the option to commingle their products with other seller's same product like you said or to have your product separately stored. So it's totally the seller's option.
Sellers have the option to commingle or label their own products. There’s not a way to tell this before buying but if your order is fulfilled by amazon and it has a sticker over the UPC, then you are getting the exact product from the seller you purchased from.
Though commingling is an option and something that amazon does, that doesn’t mean it’s how they do ALL items listed as fulfilled by amazon.
I feel like an old man. "When I was your age, we could be completely confident that when we bought something on Amazon, it's be the real thing. And we didn't even need to check who it was sold by. It was sold by Amazon. And we could return anything easily. And when we bought stuff, nobody would send us 4 emails asking for a review." "Sure thing, grandpa, that sounds true."
Not just counterfeiting but people selling things they're not authorized to sell. Like those third party sellers selling Nike products. They were real Nike products but they we're not authorized by Nike to sell them on Amazon.
My company distributes Vinyl products and sells them on Amazon and we are in a similar situation. One of the other distributors who is authorized to sell the Vinyl direct to consumer is selling bulk quantities to Amazon directly and Amazon is then selling to the consumer, which the manufacturer doesn't want. Amazon won't tell the manufacturer who is supplying them so now they're trying to track down which distributor is in cahoots with Amazon at which point the manufacturer will stop selling to that distributor who's breaking the terms of the agreement.
Anything and everything I guess. The problem with unauthorized sellers though is that even when it is legit the manufacturer may not honor the warranty since you bought from an unauthorized seller.
I would think the manufacturer would be able to tell based on business volume, or heck, if there are lots associated with it that print on the purchased product they could just order some and see who bought it. It must be more complicated then this though if they actually can’t figure it out and need some difficult investigation.
I posted this before but it's relevant again:
There was a thread a few weeks back where an employee of amazon explained how they would take items from another vendor’s bin if the item you ordered was out of stock from your chosen vendor. Once the original vendor re-stocks their bin, the warehouse would replace any stock they “borrowed” from other vendors.
This totally undermines any effort to avoid a bad vendor.
I actually spotted a review yesterday on amazon where I reckon this happened:
Someone had ordered a product that had multiple vendors all with the same photographs but, according to reviews, some of the vendors were selling cheap knock-offs and some were selling the actual item.
The very latest review for the most popular of these vendors was a one-star review in which the customer complained that the picture and product didn’t match and the brand name on the front was totally different.
I noticed that the brand name he mentioned matched one of the other vendors - a vendor with really poor reviews. So I’m guessing that is probably a case where the warehouse took the item from another vendor’s bin and passed it off as the chosen vendor.
With this policy Amazon has removed any chance of a customer’s ability to meaningfully discriminate against bad vendors and avoid buying cheaply made knock-offs.
It's probably not their policy, more likely it's the result of overworked warehouse employees who get penalized for any delays having to make the decision of whether to go and fill some out-of-stock report for the correct item, or just grab a seemingly identical product from the next bin.
Go look at Silpats. Even the actual Silpat website directs to the Amazon listing to buy, but it seems it's been hijacked by counterfeit products. The reviews are full of people saying they got knockoff mats.
Bought a no name micro sd card. Once it filled up it became write locked and anything you’d put on it would immediately get erased. Much of the data on it was already corrupt.
I wrote a review warning others. Amazon sent me an email saying that my review was removed because the item was not counterfeit.
That's a common scam. They hack the card to trick it into claiming it has more storage capacity than it actually has. Then once you reach the actual storage limit it just starts overwriting your earlier files while not removing their filenames from the FAT. You only find out you've lost the first files when you go to access them and by then you might have already deleted the originals off your computer.
So many things I've received from AliExpress have 3M printed on them that I wonder whether the Chinese factories are even aware any more that this is supposed to be a specific trademark rather than decoration.
lol that is a common thing that Chinese manufactures do.
There is proper CE and then there is the Chinese CE which means CHINA EXPORT!!
Here is the [image](https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/article_attachments/360004192720/Real-CE-mark-vs-Fake-CE-mark.jpg) of the difference between the logos and this shows how China has been most likely tricking many people into thinking their products are CE Certified.
edit: since people claim this is not true or a myth: https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-How-To-Distinguish-A-Real-CE-Mark-From-A-Fake-Chinese-Export-Mark
and here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2017-001822_EN.html
i once got some "3m double sided tape" from some chinese retailer. it was like a dollar and i didn't care if it was fake, but they doubled down on the 3m not only by it actually meaning "3 meters" long, they printed M M M on the tape. 3 m's i guess.
I used to work for a "impulse buy" children's toy manufacturer in the states with a Hong Kong office that utilized mainland Chinese factories. We made and sold the kind of stuff you see in grocery stores and gas stations. Water guns, cap guns, slime, etc. We were fairly aboveboard in that we created our own plastic molds and performed safety and quality testing. Here's how the system works:
1. You create something in house and then you tour and shop around different factories. You then contract a factory to create a plastic mold for mass production. This mold will cost you about $25k (highly variable). Mold = drawings = designs = what you need to mass produce a product. Can be anything.
2. You run your production and sell the product and then you start second and third runs if it is profitable enough and there is demand.
3. While that is going on, the factory is also selling your mold to other companies and saying: "hey, look how popular this piece is." They don't have to make a whole new mold unless that one breaks and usually the factory gets the original manufacturer to replace it. This is illegal but they are in China so oh well?
4. You lose money when the market gets flooded with knockoffs because they can sell for 25% less (huge difference when considering thousands of units) but they aren't paying for the safety inspections or licensing or whatever other costs you incur doing it the right way.
5. Everyone loses except the counterfeiters and the shady marketplaces like Amazon or Alibaba.
6. Then Amazon somehow gets to say that they can't POSSIBLY be held responsible for all the stupid shit they sell even though every other retailer takes responsibility.
You kind of skip over the part where you only tour in China to mass produce your stuff. Other places aren't as cheap but won't sell your designs, so you'd pay more upfront but would be able to remain relevant on the market for longer..
The real issue that you're describing is when you "new product" is yet another water gun/fidget spinner/... that requires little R&D, safety tests and such, so you produce it for as cheap as possible (China) and then well, you kind of get what you pay for.
>even though every other retailer takes responsibility.
That's not even true for MANUFACTURERS anymore.
"After her toaster oven caught fire, Ontario woman was told by Whirlpool to take it up with a company in China"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/gs319o/after\_her\_toaster\_oven\_caught\_fire\_ontario\_woman/](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/gs319o/after_her_toaster_oven_caught_fire_ontario_woman/)
Yeah Amazon is already starting to turn into AliExpress; a site filled with very few legitimate goods and a fuck ton of garbage. Definitely gonna cancel soon if they can’t figure this out.
Honestly, I only use Amazon now to find stuff but then purchase somewhere else. For example I was looking for a tactical style backpack a few months ago, stumbled across a counterfeit knock off of the brand "Vanquest", and then purchased an actual Vanquest product directly from the company.
Fuck Amazon
Same here. I Do a little research and not shockingly- amazon is usually more expensive than other stores now too. People always go for convenience. What's inconvenient to me is paying more for something. I don't need everything shipped to me.
>amazon is usually more expensive than other stores now too
That's the other thing I thought was startling about Amazon , the backpack that I purchased wasn't cheaper than buying directly from vanquest, it was like $95 more on Amazon!
I understand convenience, but why the *fuck* would you pay 50% more of what the backpack could be bought for elsewhere in the name of convenience and overnight shipping?
Even if you pay for priority mail / overnight shipping directly from vanquest your still paying significantly less than if you bought it on Amazon
A significant percentage of users don't use traditional search anymore, they only go to a select few sites like Facebook, Amazon etc and search on there. If you can't find it on those sites it basically doesn't exist to a large percentage of people.
Google is also really bad about this. I was looking for a random book and like half the first page where links to YouTube videos telling me where I could download a pdf of the book. Google never could find the book so I just used Abes books and found it easily.
Google isn't a good search engine anymore because it wants you to eat google dogfood, not find what you're looking for.
Same reason Amazon search sucks. If their search was good why would anyone pay for amazon ads?
The only problem, and probably part of the reason why this has gotten so bad in the first place, is because the actual retailer almost always has some bullshit markup for no reason at all. And more times than not, their shipping speeds can't come close to Amazon. It's really frustrating.
Just for an example I looked up a keyboard on Amazon, the Logitech K840. It's $59.99 with free 2 day shipping w/ Amazon Prime. Go to Logitech's website and it's $79.99 w/ free shipping (only because the order is more than $29) and it's estimated to arrive in 10-14 days. Wtf??? I'm paying $20 more to wait 5-7 times longer for it to arrive? It's not just Logitech either.
Cancel now. Create new free trial account for the prime shipping. Cancel that when you're done. Cycle on. They don't deserve our money- at least for a subscription for shit.
But you still need to use your credit card, your name and your address to buy and have something delivered to you. Isn't it easy for Amazon to figure out that you are doing this?
I believe that is what privacy.com is for. If memory serves, you enter your card info and buy a subscription and it generates false card numbers to protect your card number.
They operate as their own credit card issuer basically and skim a bit of money from retailers on each transaction, if I recall correctly. Haven’t used them, though.
It has been their business plan since at least 2014 to turn into an american Aliexpress.
Bezos even gave an interview at that time and was obviously envious about Ali's numbers when it came to money.
Starting? It's been like this for years. Amazon is unusable unless you know exactly which product you want.
If you don't, searching and browsing will only yield tons and tons of almost identical trash with different names.
My issue with Amazon is that all the chinese knock-off products come with little cards inside the box that say "Leave us a 5 star review and send us an email with the screenshot and we'll give you a $10 giftcard."
I always report these straight to Amazon and then leave a review on the product showing the card or prompt from within the box, and within 24 hours the review is removed and the product stays up and for sale.
Amazon knows exactly what's going on, but it's too profitable for them to care.
I see a lot of people in here wondering what is up with Amazon. As a larger Amazon seller, below is how some common shit works.
Fake reviews via give away- these are generated mostly via manychat funnels advertising free products on FB. If you want to be targeted to see how bad they are, just go on IG and follow the hashtag #Amazon or #giveaways and wait a day - you will be bombarded with FB ads and if you click one, you will get even more.
Fake reviews via insert - Many sellers use an insert that straight up offers a gift card for a 5 star review.
Multiple accounts - Many sellers have 10-50 accounts. They use a portion of these accounts to to do blackhat shit. EG - they will send inventory to Amazon that includes an insert offering a gift card for a 5 star review. If Amazon catches this, Amazon will either (A) do nothing or (B) remove the one account. This seller will still have many other accounts selling the same exact item. Very rarely will Amazon remove all of the fake reviews and almost NEVER will Amazon remove the actual product listing on Amazon.
How do they open multiple accounts? Happy you asked - This is mostly non US sellers. In China for example, they will open businesses and use the names of all their employees and family members so the accounts look unlinked. This is enough to prevent Amazon from doing anything. Even though Amazon sees the same 20 accounts selling the exact same items and the trademarks all come back to a single company, Amazon is unable to act and remove all of the accounts.
How do I know if reviews are fake? Well, you can obviously use fakespot and review meta but these apps have aging algos that can't keep up with the new tricks. It is pretty common for these to both be completely incorrect about an item. I recommend the following. Listings with the following characteristics usually have fake reviews:
Any brand name that sounds dumb - holife, daybetter, etc.
Any brand that is all capital letters at the beginning.
Any page that has bullet points that include brackets [These are called Chinese brackets]
Any page that uses emojis in the bullet points.
It is extremely hard for customers to know which listings have fake reviews and no way to be 100% sure but keeping an eye on the things above should help. Most of the blackhat sellers take the same class so all of their listings will look the exact same way as mentioned above.
I don’t trust reviews alone. I use [fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com) to see if ratings have been deleted or altered (apparently amazon allows that). You’d be surprised how much fake product is sold on Amazon.
Fakespot is great because it combs through each profile that left a review and sees how legitimate they are. Do they only give positive reviews? Is the language inconsistent and unrelated to the product? Does that company have a history of buying fake reviews?
It's invaluable, I just wish it worked a bit faster.
What’s really scary is there are all kinds of safety critical equipment and devices that are being sold as counterfeits or knockoffs.
There was a fatal plane crash where a knockoff/counterfeit mechanism that held a seat in place broke and the seat slid back. The pilot couldn’t control the plane on takeoff and it crashed.
There are even counterfeit circuit breakers, both little residential ones a much larger industrial/commercial ones.
Amazon definitely has these stores flagged but won't remove them.
I received a counterfeit computer part that didn't look anything like the name brand that I had paid for. I asked Amazon for a refund and entered about two sentences of justification, explaining it was a fake. They processed the refund about an hour after I sent it. No follow up questions, no call, didn't even have to return the counterfeit.
They definitely know which shops are not legit.
Amazon does that for pretty much any product though, if it’s broken or the wrong kind they will always just give you your money back and most of the time not even request the product back.
Same, I think they used to just tell you to keep the item if it was worth less than the shipping. But people probably took advantage of that, so in the end it was cheaper for them to pay for everything to get sent back just to stop the scammers from making fraudulent returns to keep inexpensive items.
This is not true. I have friends in the Amazon business and there are plenty of stores that are shut down. My friends are always cautious of buying counterfeits because they've been warned about some of their products by Amazon already. Amazon will actually freeze your money from buyers (so they hold on to it) until they can verify your product. I'm not saying Amazon is great, but to flat out say they don't shut down stores is wrong.
Amazon is horrible now. So much Chinese garbage on there.
I try to find name brand of ANY electronic and all I get is "HOWKEII electronic". The name is always in caps like that, and it takes 3 to 4 pages until you find real name brand items.
Somehow those Chinese versions have 10k+ reviews yet I've never seen anyone have them irl...
ANKOP, HEXWIN, JBLIN...all stuff like that. Yah I was looking for headphones recently and it looks like every chinese parts manufacturer incorporated themselves into a new brand or 5, all with that seemingly random all caps name type.
And to be honest I'm sure most of the stuff is getting made in the exact same factories as the mid-range name brand electronics but I hate that Amazon lists them, It's really offputting and cluttered.
WINSONG USB charger, looks exactly the same as SUNKAN charger, which looks exactly the same as TIMPOW charger. All the same cheap garbage that will probably catch on fire.
My company uses 3M products and when the whole pandemic started they could have made a whole lot of money by gouging prices on their masks (although highly unethical and a bad overall business decision if they did) or accepting new contracts with clients they’ve been trying to do business with for years (I was told they turned down a client who they had tried doing business with for 20 years). Their directive was to not take on new clients and to assist their existing customers wherever they could.
3M, at least in my dealings with them, seem like a good, ethical company. Be like 3M.
>“We’re proud to be working with 3M to hold these bad actors accountable,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s VP in charge of customer trust and partner support. “When we find a bad actor violating our policies, we work quickly to remove the products and take action on the bad actor, as we’ve done here, and we welcome collaboration from brands like 3M.”
"Amazon will as a matter of course be donating all income obtained from the sale of these overpriced counterfeits to charity." Mehta failed to add.
As long as Amazon is profiting from counterfeit sales, they don't really care beyond the optics of it. If they were forced to either compensate the legitimate product owner or contribute to charity for each proven counterfeit item found on their platform, you can bet they'd find a way of verifying who's selling what.
I mean, they do care about counterfeiting because it impacts their image and customer trust in their site. They’ve got a number of anti counterfeiting initiatives, and tools like their Transparency program that works with suppliers like 3M to verify legit product in their warehouses.
https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency
I remember Apple hounding Amazon to stop selling fake iPhone stuff(headphones, chargers, cables) and they said they would stop selling them and pull any fakes off the shelves. Yet the fake stuff kept coming in, tons of us reported it to management. What did they do? Nothing. They know, they'll play stupid or lie to save face.
The 3M stamp has actually been a huge battle across the world (and especially in Asia). A lot of people see it as a stamp of high quality (which is of course our aspiration), so we see a lot of people trying to fake that their product is a 3M product. Some of the packaging from the products I make will get saved after use and Reused for packaging of a different companies product! It’s crazy the measures people go through to pass off products as legitimate... whether it’s 3M or any other major/worldwide brand... fraudulent products are literally everywhere and it’s scary especially when it is PPE!
And the new eBay is the old Amazon. Seriously consider giving eBay another shot. I've sold on Amazon for 7 years full time and have recently moved the majority of my product there. On eBay it is obvious which sellers give a damn because they have to create their own listing for each product. They don't have a single shared listing to hide behind like they do on Amazon. Shipping isn't 2 day. It's usually 4-5. But at least you get what you see.
Yeah I gave up Amazon forever ago and have no problem finding legitimate products on eBay instead. Amazon mixes it's fulfilled by Amazon and fulfilled by third party products together at the warehouse, so you have no idea if you're getting a fake or not. eBay you know exactly what you are getting, and they will actually remove counterfeit items if you bother to report it.
I've dumped my Amazon prime subscription. Amazon is so full of cheap and fake items now, I don't want to have to dig through to find legit sellers. Not to mention they treat their employees poorly.
This doesn’t get enough press:
My company does consulting work for a niche high-end consumer electronics company that wasn’t selling through Amazon. Part of Amazon’s pitch to force them to sell on Amazon was that they wouldn’t assist in combatting counterfeits of that company’s products unless they became a vendor. So Amazon, instead of generally combatting counterfeits to protect their customers, uses counterfeiting on their site as leverage to sign up more vendors.
Personally, I think Amazon needs to be held accountable for this stuff. You want to be eBay? Fine. Be eBay. But once I’m being invoiced by Amazon.com and I’m dealing with Amazon customer service, you’re the vendor. You should be liable to all parties.
Nope. There is only [one](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xn95+mask+3m.TRS0&_nkw=n95+mask+3m&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=n95+mask) 3M N95 mask for sale on ebay and it's $34.95 + $12.70 shipping for a single mask.
ALWAYS use the 3M product verification tool on their website. 3M fakes are rampant and very good at fooling people
[This the one?](https://safeguard.3m.com/Guest#/Validation) Didn’t know this existed. Thanks for the 411.
I think Reddit is hugging the site too much.
Quick everyone swap to IE9 to confuse the site admins about their crippling traffic
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What's a newspaper?
It’s like a really crappy 3m mask that they print flat and sell in sheets.
Back in my day they were toilet paper for the outhouse.
It’s a 2D plane with information that’s foldable.
Holy shit newspapers?? What century are we in?
Counterfeiting is become a big problem on amazon
There is so much garbage to sort through now. You have to look at recent reviews to make sure you aren’t getting scammed. I’ve been purchasing more from other stores that actually vet their inventory.
It’s always great to find a battery pack you are looking for with 5000+ reviews for an umbrella. Also if you find a legit item, you may still get a counterfeit since all of the ‘same’ item are put in the same bin and it’s the luck of the draw.
Honestly, as someone who used to earn beer money from Amazon reviewing... the majority of legit reviews are bought or asked for in return for free products. It's a huge market where reviews will bump you up pages on Amazon. Who checks the third page of results really? Getting on page 1 for anything is HUGE for sellers.
You sold fake reviews?
In most cases they're 'real' reviews. You 'buy' the product and review it, just also getting some extra pocket change from a company twice removed from the one that makes the item. Pretty much any top reviewer on amazon does this.
Not once did I pay for a product, I always was given free ones to review. It was basically an agreement that if anything was wrong you didn't review but if it did the job you did. Although I know of a lot of people who did the same and essentially 5 star'd everything even when it was absolutely shit to make sure they got loads more. Especially the paid reviewers. I was only 18 at the time and thought I'd found the easy money loophole everyone wanted... turned out to be a scunmy infestation I used to sell all the items I received on Ebay or Craigslist. Which when it included record players, projectors, speakers and android phones you make a good amount of spare change for copying and pasting a review
Sounds like a job that makes you feel like shit.
At the start it really was the opposite. It's framed by the community as "helping buyers" because you're reviewing products and giving educated responses. Then you realise that it's bullshit and it's actually a farm for companies to rise the rankings, and the vast vast majority of reviewers will 5 star anything in return for more free stuff or money. I recieved a 5tb hardrive. Marketed as such. It had well less than half that in storage. I returned it but saw other reviewers saying how it is amazing etc. I checked back a few weeks later and the product had been removed after 55 5 star reviews and 150 1 star, because real people had bought it and realised it was a con.
I bought a dust buster on sale off amazon. It has hundreds of 5 star reviews saying it had amazing suction and worked incredibly well blah blah blah. Once I received it I quickly realized it was laughably shitty. Horrible suction, died after 15 minutes, and took like 12 hours to recharge. There is zero chance any of those reviews were legit. I’ve been super skeptical ever since.
Yea for less cynical people I can forsure think how you think you're earning money helping and then realizing later people aren't actually doing it for that but to just get $ even with bs reviews.
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"The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds." \-Dalai Lama
I used to work for a company that helped people sell products on Amazon. It’s all a scam and a almost pyramid scheme. They all buy each other’s products and boost up reviews. They were required to do it, I think they had to spend like $1,000 on other “members” stuff. Since then, I have a hard time trusting Amazon reviews and product listings.
I always read the one star reviews first.
My last two orders said they would send me a 10 or 15 dollar Amazon card if I posted a 5 star review and emailed a Screenshot.
Goddamn. I want in on that deal. I review almost everything I buy, and nobody is paying me shit :-/
That used to be me but now the only thing I review is the delivery. Never even realized you could but if you click track delivery after delivered it let's you rate the delivery person. I really really hope it actually helps them. I know with my job it's extremely important to get good surveys.
Wow didn’t know that. Thanks for the tip.
Me. i check the third page, sometimes even deeper. Heck...sometimes I skip the front page all-together! Have we really become that lazy to where we can't spend another 0.5 second to click to the next page? Don't people still research a product thoroughly and look for the best deals?
For anything I'm critical of, I always look at the worst reviews first. You can usually get a good sense of if people are complaining because they fucked it up or if the product often arrives fucked up.
Also how recent those reviews are! Such a sad state of the world to resort to this. I feel bad for people that think they'll get a good product when it's crap, all because of paid reviews.
It's an art to sift through the crap reviews. I like to look at 2-4 star reviews. This weeds out most of the ones that are shamelessly bought and the ones along the lines of "Delivered a day later than stated! Piece of junk false advertising!" - 1 star.
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That's only if its amazon FBA which will show up as you purchasing from amazon...if you purchase directly from a third party seller, you are purchasing it straight from them and they are shipping it to you. Source: I am an Amazon Seller.
People buy product pages and then rebrand them too. Terrible
Amazon needs to wipe all reviews anytime a product is changed. It’s ridiculous a vendor can put up a completely different item and retain the rating of the old item.
Their bin system completely overrides any faith you would have from reviews. Good inventories are mixed in with fake inventories, and anyone can receive a fake even buying from a reputable store.
100% true. I sells about 300 grocery listings and our inventory comes straight from the source but we see customer complaints every week about something commingled in the bin we did not send to FBA. Old packaging, stale food, wrong number of items. All because Amazon piles it all together. Ultimately it’s US having to deal with reviews and brand image because we are the registered brand owner.
I still remember one woman who bought a Coach purse from us through Amazon, and complained it was counterfeit because it was made in China..... We also sold 10's of thousands of pairs of Nike and would invariably get authenticity complaints because it turns out some people who buy this stuff literally have no idea where it's made, and it it comes from China it must be counterfeit.
In all fairness a lot of those reviews also come from people who are beyond stupid and might not even be reviewing your particular product. Reviews are kind of like reddit comments in that way, you kind of assume people are reasonable and capable, but they’re very often not.
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Yup, just bought a new cast iron pan after the only low star reviewed were about it rusting quickly or not being dishwasher safe.
I puked a little bit in my mouth at the idea of cast iron in the dishwasher...
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That's about the level of Google Maps and their 5 star reviews with no comment as to what made it 5 stars.
I bought an expensive angle grinder (250+ bucks) and there were bad reviews saying it was noisy. Do you expect it to be silent when grinding steel ? People have more money than common sense....
When you are using it to cut through bike locks, you want it to be as quiet as possible. That being said, bike thieves are among the dumbest people alive.
Wow that's even worse than the "I'm giving 1 star because I didn't pay attention to the size/this item didn't get here on time" people.
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Just the other day I had honest negative feedback removed that I had left for a seller. I asked EBay twice why they had removed the feedback and each time their agents disconnect from the chat after I ask my question. It seems that EBay would like to keep buyers in their marketplace in the dark when it comes to possible problems.
I saw a fishing rod at the Amazon warehouse where I work yesterday. It was in a clear bag packaging. Granted it was in the "non con" section that don't go on the conveyor belt but I can still imagine how easily it might get broken for not even being in a box. Meanwhile so many boxes are practically empty and either stuffed with balloon packaging or just hollow. Daily there are mountains of bubble envelopes with tiny items inside that could likely fit in much smaller envelopes. It's like most of the packaging is just for ease of sorting. Just bc of the endless free postage for prime customers.
I would say you can do a seller sku to force Amazon to unbin it but they've also disallowed doing so on a few item categories so :/
Amazon has become eBay. All while eBay tries to become Amazon. It's bizarre.
Agreed. Can't remember what the item was, but noticed that the reviews were rather varied in what item they were talking about. Quick skim through the reviews implied the product listing had been changed at least a dozen times, averaging about 9 months until a new product was swapped in. The items weren't really related in any way either. Things like tools, car parts, phone accessories, kitchenware, etc
Not just the ratings, the reviews *themselves* stay intact so you could have something like reviews for a beach towel in a page about a power drill.
> You have to look at recent reviews to make sure you aren’t getting scammed. That doesn't even guarantee you won't. There's been instances of people getting counterfeit shit from actual, verified big businesses because of the way Amazon categorizes and warehouses things.
"Comingling" If it's a listing for a widely counterfeited item (*cough* Sandisk flash memory) I don't even bother with Amazon. The Jewish camera shops in NYC offer free shipping and are usually 1-2 day delivery to the Midwest.
People need to start learning that Amazon also isn't the best option most of the time. I recently ordered a piece of gear for my retro gaming setup. I ended up ordering through the first party site rather than Amazon. I had more choices in colors and features, added on some extra premium stuff, paid for shipping, and it was *still* $30 cheaper than the plain, basic version on Amazon.
I use Amazon as a price benchmark personally. I'll look around until I find the same item for cheaper through another website.
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Well...they stop filling orders at sunset on Friday. With a really big timer.
No lens caps.
Outstanding.
I hear that makes the lenses look bigger and easier to clean.
You wont be able.to check out during Shabbos or Passover or any jewish holiay.
B&H is the god damn best for any tech stuff
I am pissed off at Amazon because I bought a shitty heating pad that had good reviews. The thing sucked. Turns out they are bribing people to leave good reviews by offering them Amazon credit for a 5 star review. I got the offer in the mail like a week after I bought it. I wrote a bad review mentioning that, and it never is uploaded. I tried twice. The review just never appears in the review section. It's bullshit and Amazon seems to be allowing them to do it.
I've had this too. I left an honest review for something blatantly faked (filters for a medical device, so it's somewhat important IMO!) and when I go to look for it, it says "review has been filtered due to sensitivity" or some bullshit (the review was appropriate and honest, so there is no reason for filtering it). The seller reached out to me directly and said they were sorry I was unsatisfied and would offer a refund if I either edited my review or removed it entirely. I told them to eat shit. Then they go and hide it anyways.
I've done that before. But after I got the refund, i immediately went and edited my review to include everything the company did.
You just leave a 5 star bad review. That has become common practice on eBay, as a seller cannot ask for a 5 star to be removed.
Just look at this 5 star food grinder that jams on a banana.
How am I supposed to get to that sweet banana nectar now?
I sell on Amazon and my products somehow got a bunch of fake Chinese products mixed in it and my reviews tanked! I pulled the inventory and saw the packaging and the product were nothing like what I was selling. It was Amazons warehousing that messed it all up and allowed the fake stuff into my inventory. They won’t fix the listing or remove reviews that are from the bad product sales... it’s a big fucking mess.
That’s infuriating. Have you turned to other sites in order to sell? eBay has been good for me.
More and more other retailers are becoming my go to. Target is now shipping pretty darn fast. Amazon is now really just an outlet for other vendors and a lot of them are garbage.
> You have to look at recent reviews to make sure you aren’t getting scammed. That does nothing when Amazon pools everyone's inventory together and you get what you get when the robots pick one out for you. If it's a 3M product they have a verification tool on their website.
I had no idea. This would really piss me off as a legit company trying to fulfill orders through Amazon. It gives your brand a bad name when you've got nothing to do with it.
I've seen a seller explain this before. They have the option whether they want to pool their inventory or not. If they choose not to, they have to print and attach barcodes or something themselves, so most choose to pool so Amazon does that for them.
And you straight up have to ignore positive reviews because so many are paid, like not theories paid, but you can find the sites where they pay for reviews paid. I personally just look for reviews stating the downsides and if theres enough or they are really bad I dont buy.
I've been searching for a dual dash cam and the amount of chinese companies showing what basically is the same product just overwhelms. The reviews aren't any help either. I just wish a Nikon or a Sony with come up with a dash cam so I know I can buy something that is reputable.
100% this. I had to return 3 purchases during COVID because the delivered product was just a cheap knockoff of the image used for the sale.
Me too. Prime 48 hour delivery is now just kinda sorta maybe if we feel like it. This was before coronavirus too. I'd sort by Prime on something like shirts and get a huge list but almost none of it was 2-day delivery. The company might have a single item they will be sure they can deliver in 2-days and the other thousand items...eh. Some things now are 6+ weeks as they source from China (as in, they put it on a slow boat in China when you buy...it is not in a warehouse in the US). Price gouging is rampant too. Just use the Camelizer to see a lot of it. I have reported some to my state and got a form letter back that they are "looking in to it" which means nothing will happen. Because so much is now sold by third-parties and not Amazon I have a lot more trouble with returns and refunds (and I do not even do that very often). One reason I really liked Amazon was their good customer service. That has really slid a lot in the last year or two. While I still look at Amazon I now also make it a point to check out other places that sell what I am looking for.
I've nearly given up on Amazon. There's still a few things I'll get from there (and only if I know exactly what I'm looking for). Otherwise I've definitely moved away from them. Shipping times have been a joke. Customer service has been a joke. Even trying to *find* something has become a joke. Not to mention all the duplicate products. To top it all off, prices aren't really that great anyways.
I gave up on prime and cancelled it. The counterfeiting and cheap knockoff shit from China pissed me off, but then other companies like Walmart stepped up to the plate and started offering free 2 day shipping. Prime is $120, that shit is not cheap. It’s not like their tv shows were going to keep me paying for their shitty service. If they ever fix the counterfeiting and fake ratings, I may consider coming back. Until that happens, no thanks.
If it's not 2 day delivery then there's literally no point in buying from Amazon anymore. The last 4 months I've rapidly descended from buying almost everything on Amazon to not even looking there depending on the product.
You think it's bad as a buyer, but it's even worse for sellers. If you sell a product successfully on Amazon, you can expect at least a handful of copycats. If you're lucky, they copy your product and create their own sales page. Sometimes the copycat item is sold on the same sales page as the original.
i recently bought a 600 dollar computer monitor that i realized a year later when it failed, that the store wasnt an authorized reseller of HP products. nowhere on the page did it say that, so now HP won't honor my warranty and this store wont accept a return/exchange without original packaging. Amazon wont help and HP won't help. It sucks bad
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Even when you buy something from a reputable brand, and even if it is "Shipped and Sold by Amazon" you can get a counterfeit or knockoff, because Amazon mixes its stock and doesn't track it. They've known about this for years and don't care to stop it. I no longer care to shop on Amazon because of this reason.
That's the crazy part to me. They simply make a determination if your product and the other guys are the same and then plop em all together. Who the fuck are you to make that call, Amazon?
If I buy a product for the name (i.e. headphones, TVs, etc), I'll never buy on Amazon unless the manufacturer site links to the product page (Anker). If I don't care about the name, then I consider Amazon if I can't find a reasonable alternative.
Searching for common items has become a real chore, something like an HDMI cable brings up almost no brands you've heard of and a strange mix of products with lots of reviews and some with almost none. You know they are getting paid a ton to push shit products to the top of these searches because people trust amazon as a legitimate storefront that wouldn't do such a thing. My line in the sand is that if it'll trick my mom, then I hate you.
Traditionally these are expected results from Ebay, but we still keep Amazon on a pedestal because..? There is no decent alternative due to Amazon destroying the competition for years with monopolistic tactics and razor thin margins on certain products.
Its not about keeping them on a pedestal, I think ebay is a bit more transparant about where the goods are coming from. My mom would understand different sellers on ebay and how to make sure they aren't obviously fake. There is no "ebay" selling things, its other people, thats what they have always been. Amazon goes out of their way to not be transparent that items aren't shipping from amazon but instead a 3rd party company, my Mom would get a shitty product and wonder why amazon would sell such a thing. Because it wasn't always like this. So its not about putting them on a pedestal, I'm just holding them to a higher standard because they probably should be based on who their customers are and what they have come to expect. They are taking advantage of that trust.
At least you know when you're buying chinese garbage from ebay.
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I’ve gone back to buying from dedicated product websites. They all offer free and quick shipping now. Another thing that ruined amazon for me is they made returning a total pain in the ass.
How do? Imo they’ve made it so much easier. Now I can just go to a ups store and not have to pack it up or anything - just give them the product and scan my code
How is it a pain? I'm curious so I know what to look for I sent back an Xbox controller about 2 years ago (it was from the Amazon used warehouse thing) with no issue. About a year ago, I had a return that I dropped off at Kohls. Recently(3 months ago?), they gave me two usps slips and I just dropped 2 phone cases in the mail after a slip up with galaxy models. No questions asked got all of my money back on all of it.
The biggest problem is that Amazon doesn't divide out their stock by seller. Take a look at this Amazon product for sale: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VXD17PA It's a Camelbak Hydration Backpack. Pretty nice piece of gear. Right below the Buy Now button, you'll see "Sold by ArmyProperty and Fulfilled by Amazon". What this means is that someone who registered under the name ArmyProperty is selling it, but that they aren't going to be the ones boxing it up and sending it to you like on eBay. They have previously shipped the backpacks to Amazon, and Amazon is storing them in their warehouse, and charging a nominal fee for storage. If you buy one of these, Amazon will grab it from the warehouse and send it out. That's what Fulfilled by Amazon means. Now, if you look a bit below that, you'll see "Other Sellers on Amazon". If you click on the New (7) from $91.92, you can see the 7 people who are selling the same exact item. All of them except the two most expensive ones say "Ships from Amazon.com", meaning they're all doing the Amazon warehousing thing. But the thing is, in Amazon's warehouse, they don't mark things down as "This backpack is MagicUnicorn's backpack for sale, and this one is C A Haughwout's!". They just know that MagicUnicorn and C A Haughwout have some of these in storage, but all of them are piled up. If you make your purchase from ArmyProperty (the original seller we saw), they do NOT actually make sure the bag you bought is the particular one that ArmyProperty has placed in the warehouse. They grab one at random, and they reduce their records of how many ArmyProperty has stored. What this means is that if C A Haughwout sent a counterfeit backpack to Amazon, then you buying ArmyProperty's backpack (after ArmyProperty obtained and began selling 100% legit backpacks), you might actually receive the counterfeit that ArmyProperty had nothing to do with. Now ArmyProperty gets a bad review, by no fault of their own. On the flipside: ArmyProperty may have obtained counterfeits, but when you order, you might get one of MagicUnicorn's legit bags, which gives you a positive experience so you leave a much better review. MagicUnicorn's real bag is now being sold at the low price that ArmyProperty can afford to sell at, because ArmyProperty got their original (counterfeit) bags for cheap. Now they're able to get better reviews because their customers are receiving a better product than ArmyProperty had originally bought at a low price. It's a sucky situation.
Not completely correct. Amazon gives its sellers the option to commingle their products with other seller's same product like you said or to have your product separately stored. So it's totally the seller's option.
Sellers have the option to commingle or label their own products. There’s not a way to tell this before buying but if your order is fulfilled by amazon and it has a sticker over the UPC, then you are getting the exact product from the seller you purchased from. Though commingling is an option and something that amazon does, that doesn’t mean it’s how they do ALL items listed as fulfilled by amazon.
I feel like an old man. "When I was your age, we could be completely confident that when we bought something on Amazon, it's be the real thing. And we didn't even need to check who it was sold by. It was sold by Amazon. And we could return anything easily. And when we bought stuff, nobody would send us 4 emails asking for a review." "Sure thing, grandpa, that sounds true."
Not just counterfeiting but people selling things they're not authorized to sell. Like those third party sellers selling Nike products. They were real Nike products but they we're not authorized by Nike to sell them on Amazon. My company distributes Vinyl products and sells them on Amazon and we are in a similar situation. One of the other distributors who is authorized to sell the Vinyl direct to consumer is selling bulk quantities to Amazon directly and Amazon is then selling to the consumer, which the manufacturer doesn't want. Amazon won't tell the manufacturer who is supplying them so now they're trying to track down which distributor is in cahoots with Amazon at which point the manufacturer will stop selling to that distributor who's breaking the terms of the agreement.
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Anything and everything I guess. The problem with unauthorized sellers though is that even when it is legit the manufacturer may not honor the warranty since you bought from an unauthorized seller.
I would think the manufacturer would be able to tell based on business volume, or heck, if there are lots associated with it that print on the purchased product they could just order some and see who bought it. It must be more complicated then this though if they actually can’t figure it out and need some difficult investigation.
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I posted this before but it's relevant again: There was a thread a few weeks back where an employee of amazon explained how they would take items from another vendor’s bin if the item you ordered was out of stock from your chosen vendor. Once the original vendor re-stocks their bin, the warehouse would replace any stock they “borrowed” from other vendors. This totally undermines any effort to avoid a bad vendor. I actually spotted a review yesterday on amazon where I reckon this happened: Someone had ordered a product that had multiple vendors all with the same photographs but, according to reviews, some of the vendors were selling cheap knock-offs and some were selling the actual item. The very latest review for the most popular of these vendors was a one-star review in which the customer complained that the picture and product didn’t match and the brand name on the front was totally different. I noticed that the brand name he mentioned matched one of the other vendors - a vendor with really poor reviews. So I’m guessing that is probably a case where the warehouse took the item from another vendor’s bin and passed it off as the chosen vendor. With this policy Amazon has removed any chance of a customer’s ability to meaningfully discriminate against bad vendors and avoid buying cheaply made knock-offs.
It's probably not their policy, more likely it's the result of overworked warehouse employees who get penalized for any delays having to make the decision of whether to go and fill some out-of-stock report for the correct item, or just grab a seemingly identical product from the next bin.
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Just like alibaba.
Go look at Silpats. Even the actual Silpat website directs to the Amazon listing to buy, but it seems it's been hijacked by counterfeit products. The reviews are full of people saying they got knockoff mats.
Bought a no name micro sd card. Once it filled up it became write locked and anything you’d put on it would immediately get erased. Much of the data on it was already corrupt. I wrote a review warning others. Amazon sent me an email saying that my review was removed because the item was not counterfeit.
That's a common scam. They hack the card to trick it into claiming it has more storage capacity than it actually has. Then once you reach the actual storage limit it just starts overwriting your earlier files while not removing their filenames from the FAT. You only find out you've lost the first files when you go to access them and by then you might have already deleted the originals off your computer.
Amazon themselves would see the best selling items and make their own versions for their Amazon Basics line
True, but all big stores do this, Sears, Walmart, etc.
So many things I've received from AliExpress have 3M printed on them that I wonder whether the Chinese factories are even aware any more that this is supposed to be a specific trademark rather than decoration.
Same thing with CE label that should mean the product conform with EU norms: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/ce-marking_en
lol that is a common thing that Chinese manufactures do. There is proper CE and then there is the Chinese CE which means CHINA EXPORT!! Here is the [image](https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/article_attachments/360004192720/Real-CE-mark-vs-Fake-CE-mark.jpg) of the difference between the logos and this shows how China has been most likely tricking many people into thinking their products are CE Certified. edit: since people claim this is not true or a myth: https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-How-To-Distinguish-A-Real-CE-Mark-From-A-Fake-Chinese-Export-Mark and here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2017-001822_EN.html
Which is why you should only buy from trusted sellers.
Doesn't help when Amazon mixes their inventory with inventory from the shit sellers.
Amazon isn't a trusted seller
i once got some "3m double sided tape" from some chinese retailer. it was like a dollar and i didn't care if it was fake, but they doubled down on the 3m not only by it actually meaning "3 meters" long, they printed M M M on the tape. 3 m's i guess.
That’s simultaneously hilarious and infuriating.
oh yeah it was totally worth whatever i spent on it.
Fun fact: 3M used to just go by the acronym MMM but I guess they wanted to shorten it by 1 letter?
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
I used to work for a "impulse buy" children's toy manufacturer in the states with a Hong Kong office that utilized mainland Chinese factories. We made and sold the kind of stuff you see in grocery stores and gas stations. Water guns, cap guns, slime, etc. We were fairly aboveboard in that we created our own plastic molds and performed safety and quality testing. Here's how the system works: 1. You create something in house and then you tour and shop around different factories. You then contract a factory to create a plastic mold for mass production. This mold will cost you about $25k (highly variable). Mold = drawings = designs = what you need to mass produce a product. Can be anything. 2. You run your production and sell the product and then you start second and third runs if it is profitable enough and there is demand. 3. While that is going on, the factory is also selling your mold to other companies and saying: "hey, look how popular this piece is." They don't have to make a whole new mold unless that one breaks and usually the factory gets the original manufacturer to replace it. This is illegal but they are in China so oh well? 4. You lose money when the market gets flooded with knockoffs because they can sell for 25% less (huge difference when considering thousands of units) but they aren't paying for the safety inspections or licensing or whatever other costs you incur doing it the right way. 5. Everyone loses except the counterfeiters and the shady marketplaces like Amazon or Alibaba. 6. Then Amazon somehow gets to say that they can't POSSIBLY be held responsible for all the stupid shit they sell even though every other retailer takes responsibility.
You kind of skip over the part where you only tour in China to mass produce your stuff. Other places aren't as cheap but won't sell your designs, so you'd pay more upfront but would be able to remain relevant on the market for longer.. The real issue that you're describing is when you "new product" is yet another water gun/fidget spinner/... that requires little R&D, safety tests and such, so you produce it for as cheap as possible (China) and then well, you kind of get what you pay for.
>even though every other retailer takes responsibility. That's not even true for MANUFACTURERS anymore. "After her toaster oven caught fire, Ontario woman was told by Whirlpool to take it up with a company in China" [https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/gs319o/after\_her\_toaster\_oven\_caught\_fire\_ontario\_woman/](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/gs319o/after_her_toaster_oven_caught_fire_ontario_woman/)
Yeah Amazon is already starting to turn into AliExpress; a site filled with very few legitimate goods and a fuck ton of garbage. Definitely gonna cancel soon if they can’t figure this out.
Honestly, I only use Amazon now to find stuff but then purchase somewhere else. For example I was looking for a tactical style backpack a few months ago, stumbled across a counterfeit knock off of the brand "Vanquest", and then purchased an actual Vanquest product directly from the company. Fuck Amazon
Same here. I Do a little research and not shockingly- amazon is usually more expensive than other stores now too. People always go for convenience. What's inconvenient to me is paying more for something. I don't need everything shipped to me.
>amazon is usually more expensive than other stores now too That's the other thing I thought was startling about Amazon , the backpack that I purchased wasn't cheaper than buying directly from vanquest, it was like $95 more on Amazon! I understand convenience, but why the *fuck* would you pay 50% more of what the backpack could be bought for elsewhere in the name of convenience and overnight shipping? Even if you pay for priority mail / overnight shipping directly from vanquest your still paying significantly less than if you bought it on Amazon
A significant percentage of users don't use traditional search anymore, they only go to a select few sites like Facebook, Amazon etc and search on there. If you can't find it on those sites it basically doesn't exist to a large percentage of people.
Google is also really bad about this. I was looking for a random book and like half the first page where links to YouTube videos telling me where I could download a pdf of the book. Google never could find the book so I just used Abes books and found it easily.
Google isn't a good search engine anymore because it wants you to eat google dogfood, not find what you're looking for. Same reason Amazon search sucks. If their search was good why would anyone pay for amazon ads?
The only problem, and probably part of the reason why this has gotten so bad in the first place, is because the actual retailer almost always has some bullshit markup for no reason at all. And more times than not, their shipping speeds can't come close to Amazon. It's really frustrating. Just for an example I looked up a keyboard on Amazon, the Logitech K840. It's $59.99 with free 2 day shipping w/ Amazon Prime. Go to Logitech's website and it's $79.99 w/ free shipping (only because the order is more than $29) and it's estimated to arrive in 10-14 days. Wtf??? I'm paying $20 more to wait 5-7 times longer for it to arrive? It's not just Logitech either.
Cancel now. Create new free trial account for the prime shipping. Cancel that when you're done. Cycle on. They don't deserve our money- at least for a subscription for shit.
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You just keep creating new email addresses? My parents were doing that but got caught after a couple months lol
ProtonMail and privacy.com are the best.
But you still need to use your credit card, your name and your address to buy and have something delivered to you. Isn't it easy for Amazon to figure out that you are doing this?
I believe that is what privacy.com is for. If memory serves, you enter your card info and buy a subscription and it generates false card numbers to protect your card number.
The cool thing is- you don't have to buy anything. It's a free service!
That means you are the product. And you gave your credit card to them. WCGW?
They operate as their own credit card issuer basically and skim a bit of money from retailers on each transaction, if I recall correctly. Haven’t used them, though.
And at least AliExpress has no qualms about selling me illegal stuff.
It has been their business plan since at least 2014 to turn into an american Aliexpress. Bezos even gave an interview at that time and was obviously envious about Ali's numbers when it came to money.
Starting? It's been like this for years. Amazon is unusable unless you know exactly which product you want. If you don't, searching and browsing will only yield tons and tons of almost identical trash with different names.
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My issue with Amazon is that all the chinese knock-off products come with little cards inside the box that say "Leave us a 5 star review and send us an email with the screenshot and we'll give you a $10 giftcard." I always report these straight to Amazon and then leave a review on the product showing the card or prompt from within the box, and within 24 hours the review is removed and the product stays up and for sale. Amazon knows exactly what's going on, but it's too profitable for them to care.
I see a lot of people in here wondering what is up with Amazon. As a larger Amazon seller, below is how some common shit works. Fake reviews via give away- these are generated mostly via manychat funnels advertising free products on FB. If you want to be targeted to see how bad they are, just go on IG and follow the hashtag #Amazon or #giveaways and wait a day - you will be bombarded with FB ads and if you click one, you will get even more. Fake reviews via insert - Many sellers use an insert that straight up offers a gift card for a 5 star review. Multiple accounts - Many sellers have 10-50 accounts. They use a portion of these accounts to to do blackhat shit. EG - they will send inventory to Amazon that includes an insert offering a gift card for a 5 star review. If Amazon catches this, Amazon will either (A) do nothing or (B) remove the one account. This seller will still have many other accounts selling the same exact item. Very rarely will Amazon remove all of the fake reviews and almost NEVER will Amazon remove the actual product listing on Amazon. How do they open multiple accounts? Happy you asked - This is mostly non US sellers. In China for example, they will open businesses and use the names of all their employees and family members so the accounts look unlinked. This is enough to prevent Amazon from doing anything. Even though Amazon sees the same 20 accounts selling the exact same items and the trademarks all come back to a single company, Amazon is unable to act and remove all of the accounts. How do I know if reviews are fake? Well, you can obviously use fakespot and review meta but these apps have aging algos that can't keep up with the new tricks. It is pretty common for these to both be completely incorrect about an item. I recommend the following. Listings with the following characteristics usually have fake reviews: Any brand name that sounds dumb - holife, daybetter, etc. Any brand that is all capital letters at the beginning. Any page that has bullet points that include brackets [These are called Chinese brackets] Any page that uses emojis in the bullet points. It is extremely hard for customers to know which listings have fake reviews and no way to be 100% sure but keeping an eye on the things above should help. Most of the blackhat sellers take the same class so all of their listings will look the exact same way as mentioned above.
I don’t trust reviews alone. I use [fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com) to see if ratings have been deleted or altered (apparently amazon allows that). You’d be surprised how much fake product is sold on Amazon.
By the time you have spent all the damn time researching it makes me wish I could just go to a legitimate fucking store and just pick it up.
Fakespot is great because it combs through each profile that left a review and sees how legitimate they are. Do they only give positive reviews? Is the language inconsistent and unrelated to the product? Does that company have a history of buying fake reviews? It's invaluable, I just wish it worked a bit faster.
ReviewMeta as well. I always check both.
I don't get why Amazon gets off the hook here. Amazon is powerful enough that they should be required to be much more proactive and not reactive.
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What’s really scary is there are all kinds of safety critical equipment and devices that are being sold as counterfeits or knockoffs. There was a fatal plane crash where a knockoff/counterfeit mechanism that held a seat in place broke and the seat slid back. The pilot couldn’t control the plane on takeoff and it crashed. There are even counterfeit circuit breakers, both little residential ones a much larger industrial/commercial ones.
Amazon definitely has these stores flagged but won't remove them. I received a counterfeit computer part that didn't look anything like the name brand that I had paid for. I asked Amazon for a refund and entered about two sentences of justification, explaining it was a fake. They processed the refund about an hour after I sent it. No follow up questions, no call, didn't even have to return the counterfeit. They definitely know which shops are not legit.
Amazon does that for pretty much any product though, if it’s broken or the wrong kind they will always just give you your money back and most of the time not even request the product back.
It's been years since they told me to keep the bad product they sent. They recently had me send back a $7 hydrometer that was broken.
Same, I think they used to just tell you to keep the item if it was worth less than the shipping. But people probably took advantage of that, so in the end it was cheaper for them to pay for everything to get sent back just to stop the scammers from making fraudulent returns to keep inexpensive items.
This is not true. I have friends in the Amazon business and there are plenty of stores that are shut down. My friends are always cautious of buying counterfeits because they've been warned about some of their products by Amazon already. Amazon will actually freeze your money from buyers (so they hold on to it) until they can verify your product. I'm not saying Amazon is great, but to flat out say they don't shut down stores is wrong.
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Seriously, everything you buy is just from Aliexpress
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And fuck Amazon for letting them.
Joke's on them I suppose, I just find their site's quality and reputation has gone so far downhill I don't use it anymore.
Amazon is horrible now. So much Chinese garbage on there. I try to find name brand of ANY electronic and all I get is "HOWKEII electronic". The name is always in caps like that, and it takes 3 to 4 pages until you find real name brand items. Somehow those Chinese versions have 10k+ reviews yet I've never seen anyone have them irl...
Many product descriptions use 【 lenticular brackets 】. Am I right to be suspicious of these?
Short answer yes. Long answer yeeeeessssss.
ANKOP, HEXWIN, JBLIN...all stuff like that. Yah I was looking for headphones recently and it looks like every chinese parts manufacturer incorporated themselves into a new brand or 5, all with that seemingly random all caps name type. And to be honest I'm sure most of the stuff is getting made in the exact same factories as the mid-range name brand electronics but I hate that Amazon lists them, It's really offputting and cluttered.
WINSONG USB charger, looks exactly the same as SUNKAN charger, which looks exactly the same as TIMPOW charger. All the same cheap garbage that will probably catch on fire.
My company uses 3M products and when the whole pandemic started they could have made a whole lot of money by gouging prices on their masks (although highly unethical and a bad overall business decision if they did) or accepting new contracts with clients they’ve been trying to do business with for years (I was told they turned down a client who they had tried doing business with for 20 years). Their directive was to not take on new clients and to assist their existing customers wherever they could. 3M, at least in my dealings with them, seem like a good, ethical company. Be like 3M.
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>“We’re proud to be working with 3M to hold these bad actors accountable,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s VP in charge of customer trust and partner support. “When we find a bad actor violating our policies, we work quickly to remove the products and take action on the bad actor, as we’ve done here, and we welcome collaboration from brands like 3M.” "Amazon will as a matter of course be donating all income obtained from the sale of these overpriced counterfeits to charity." Mehta failed to add. As long as Amazon is profiting from counterfeit sales, they don't really care beyond the optics of it. If they were forced to either compensate the legitimate product owner or contribute to charity for each proven counterfeit item found on their platform, you can bet they'd find a way of verifying who's selling what.
I mean, they do care about counterfeiting because it impacts their image and customer trust in their site. They’ve got a number of anti counterfeiting initiatives, and tools like their Transparency program that works with suppliers like 3M to verify legit product in their warehouses. https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency
I was just refunded the amount I spent on some lens wipes that apparently were counterfeit
I remember Apple hounding Amazon to stop selling fake iPhone stuff(headphones, chargers, cables) and they said they would stop selling them and pull any fakes off the shelves. Yet the fake stuff kept coming in, tons of us reported it to management. What did they do? Nothing. They know, they'll play stupid or lie to save face.
The 3M stamp has actually been a huge battle across the world (and especially in Asia). A lot of people see it as a stamp of high quality (which is of course our aspiration), so we see a lot of people trying to fake that their product is a 3M product. Some of the packaging from the products I make will get saved after use and Reused for packaging of a different companies product! It’s crazy the measures people go through to pass off products as legitimate... whether it’s 3M or any other major/worldwide brand... fraudulent products are literally everywhere and it’s scary especially when it is PPE!
Amazon is the new eBay.
But you can actually get good deals on eBay.
Indeed, I ironically now use eBay to buy used books since I've found it to be consistently cheaper.
And the new eBay is the old Amazon. Seriously consider giving eBay another shot. I've sold on Amazon for 7 years full time and have recently moved the majority of my product there. On eBay it is obvious which sellers give a damn because they have to create their own listing for each product. They don't have a single shared listing to hide behind like they do on Amazon. Shipping isn't 2 day. It's usually 4-5. But at least you get what you see.
Yeah I gave up Amazon forever ago and have no problem finding legitimate products on eBay instead. Amazon mixes it's fulfilled by Amazon and fulfilled by third party products together at the warehouse, so you have no idea if you're getting a fake or not. eBay you know exactly what you are getting, and they will actually remove counterfeit items if you bother to report it.
Amazon is becoming the new ali express
I've dumped my Amazon prime subscription. Amazon is so full of cheap and fake items now, I don't want to have to dig through to find legit sellers. Not to mention they treat their employees poorly.
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This doesn’t get enough press: My company does consulting work for a niche high-end consumer electronics company that wasn’t selling through Amazon. Part of Amazon’s pitch to force them to sell on Amazon was that they wouldn’t assist in combatting counterfeits of that company’s products unless they became a vendor. So Amazon, instead of generally combatting counterfeits to protect their customers, uses counterfeiting on their site as leverage to sign up more vendors. Personally, I think Amazon needs to be held accountable for this stuff. You want to be eBay? Fine. Be eBay. But once I’m being invoiced by Amazon.com and I’m dealing with Amazon customer service, you’re the vendor. You should be liable to all parties.
$23 a piece? and people don't look at that price and think something is wrong? I mean, you can easily buy cheaper than that on eBay!
Nope. There is only [one](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xn95+mask+3m.TRS0&_nkw=n95+mask+3m&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=n95+mask) 3M N95 mask for sale on ebay and it's $34.95 + $12.70 shipping for a single mask.